The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has faulted the Ministry of Health for the sale of 25 state vehicles, and over 140 motor cycles in 2014 in a manner that breaches the Financial Administration Regulations.
Earlier, the Director General of the Service, Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare raised concerns over some of the conclusions in the 2015 Auditor General’s report in a strongly worded letter.
But after the committee probed further, he succumbed and agreed that it was wrong for the vehicles to have been sold to staff members, some for as low as 350 cedis without contacting the Auditor General.
“If you look at the paragraphs, what we were trying to do is to tell that the information was available which was not captured, but if the tone is harsh , I take it back and say we should have written it in another way or sentence so I am a bit sorry about that. I should have called the Auditor General to discuss this amicably.”
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Committee, James Klutse Avedzi, hailed the payment of 61,000 cedis from the Health Service.
“…We have been saying that many Ghanaians do not know that this is one of the success stories. We want to bring this to the attention of Ghanaians. The cars were auctioned as far back 2014, and the monies were paid by these auctioneers to the Ghana Health Service and they were keeping the money in their account and they were using the money so when we invited them to appear before the committee, they quickly mobilized the money and went and pay the money.”
The Public Accounts Committee previously grilled officials of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) after an auctioneer to the ministry was said to have contravened auction laws by auctioning 24 vehicles to staff of the ministry at ridiculously low prices.
The auctioneer, Alex Adjei, side-stepped all the laws governing the proper disposal of government vehicles and disposed off the vehicles, mostly double-cabin pickups, to the staff of the ministry and pocketed GHc33,203 as his 7% commission on the sale of the vehicles.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
